Anima appears in Union as well as levels patterned after Beacon. In Union, Anima corners Sebastian in buildings with no backdoor. She forces Sebastian into the worst place for someone who runs away — a trap. Fortunately, Sebastian has what Anima's other victims lacked: the ability to influence STEM's physical environment, and an adulthood build on emotional avoidance.

Sebastian's unconscious mind created the physical spaces at 345 Cedar, and it likewise creates Anima's Beacon-themed spaces. The level designs appeal to our old habits. Whenever she traps him, he does not challenge his pursuer. He creates a pocket within STEM where he survives by accepting himself as weak. Anima tries to corral him into traps, but every dead-end has a backdoor. Sebastian literally runs in circles and re-enacts his low-profile panic from The Evil Within.

The difference between Union and Beacon, between public and private spaces, narrates how Sebastian negotiates between shared reality and his own mind. Shared reality was not kind to him after Beacon. Others denied his experiences, and he faced the possibility of hospitalization, the worst kind of entrapment outside STEM. He survives when he retreats to his inner world, but he suffers there in a different way, forced to identify as his pain. His fear and the world — his trauma and others' skepticism — Anima and Union: all work against him.

The player lurks behind each of Sebastian's creations. He makes levels suited for The Evil Within's stealth, through which the player showed him how to hide and run. When fleeing Anima, he does not imagine a world that admits any other response. We created his past, and, unless he breaks his dependence on us, we will continue to create his future.